This is a very nice specimen that I received a few years back, but unfortunately I've seemed to misplaced the label so I have no idea where this particular fossil is from. However, I do remember the name of the creature: it's a goniatite. These things were very similar to the popularly known ammonites. While I'm not positive on the exact identification of the specimen I do know that it is at least in the Goniatite order and I'm taking a guess as to the family (Goniatitidae).

Now I hope a few of you are somewhat familiar with what these guys would have looked like alive. If not the basics are that this is a chambered shell and the actual animal lived in the newest chamber, which in this case is the one in the lower left hand corner of the photograph. The rest of the chambers were filled with gas that functioned similar to the swim bladders in fish were it would make the goniatite buoyant in the water. You can really see the chamber structure right were the white portion meets the darker section (as the goniatite grew it would build new chambers). The animal had a bunch of tentacles that would come out of the last chamber along with two eyes and a head. They lived during the Mid-Devonian up until the Late Permian in oceans and were evidently not the best swimmers in the sea.

There's a lot more cool information you can find about these very nice specimens by doing a few quick Google searches, but you can find a little bit more information on goniatites here.

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Collections

The Sholesonian is an online museum databasing all the unique, scientific, and interesting things I've found over the years. Every week I'll be posting up at least one new item to the collection along with a little tidbit on what it is. Enjoy!